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php

When to use traits in PHP

Paul Morris

Traits were introduced in PHP 5.4 on March 1st, 2012. Traits provide support for horizontal code reuse, but what is meant by horizontal reuse? Should we be using traits? This article explores what traits are and when we should use them as well as when we should not. What is a trait? Anthony...

Embracing coercion in PHP

Paul Morris

Coercion is implicit typecasting for scalar types (integer, float, boolean and string). In this article we look at how we can use coercion as an elegant alternative to explicit typecasting. Coercing to integer We can coerce any expression to integer by suffixng |0 – bitwise or operator followed by...

Ideal regex delimiters in PHP

Paul Morris

We want to find regular expression delimiters that enable us to avoid inserting additional escape sequences into our patterns. This is ideal when we want to inject foreign patterns where we can't guarantee which characters will be used. Regex grammar Delimiters /foo/i...

New PHP 5 syntax reference

Paul Morris

We briefly review the major new PHP language syntax introduced in each version since 5.3 – the version that birthed the features that paved the way for the prevailing PHP renaissance. Always Every project. Common Most projects. Uncommon Some...

Array merging in PHP

Paul Morris

Correctly merging two arrays into a single array requires thinking about the type of data we have. Is our data flat or does it contain nested arrays? What should happen when both arrays contain the same key? PHP provides three ways to merge arrays. The array union operator: +. The array_merge...